Art Question: I'm Dissatisfied. What's Next?

This is the painting I have been working on while not painting chickens. I am trying to work two different techniques together into one canvas and I AM NOT HAPPY with what is happening.

What is Happening?I originally darkened the background behind the tree (Oliver) so that the light leaves would have some contrast and some "pop!" But as I started painting the leaves in front of the darker background, I was becoming dissatisfied with what was happening. I feel like the leaves somehow aren't detailed enough and the new trunks are just horrendous; they have no touch, no sense of "trunkness", no sense of real space about them. They are sitting on the surface of the canvas and laying a big old turd. I stopped painting them in the middle of painting the one on the right.

Perhaps even more important, I don't feel like painting more realistically right now, and I don't think the painting wants me to. The chicken was good. That painting called for some realism. The object itself also had some nice abstract elements. This landscape - bahhhh!

So What Do I Do About It?After a pound of chocolate and a half bottle of chianti...
I move to a different part of the painting. After Oliver had completely frustrated me, I then began painting on the left hand side of the painting. This area is more abstract and I had figured out previously I wanted to darken the background color I was using. So I started painting this area with a purple. I started to like what I was seeing. The darker purple is flattening the space and making the drawing aspects stand out more, which is what I want in this area. I also like the purple color next to the orangey-brown of the lines. But then I ran out of the white paint I need to make my purple - CURSES! Why is this world against me!
So, next time I am in the studio, after I bike to the art store to get some white, I will continue working on the purple background. Once the rest of the painting is working, it will tell me the next step with Oliver.

Art Question: How Do I Care for Brushes When Painting Outdoors?

Daine W. recently asked me how to care for brushes when painting oil paints outdoors? Do you have to bring along a portable brush washer, or is there another way to deal with this?

There are a few things to do to care for brushes when painting outdoors.

First, always make sure that your brushes are not standing on their heads whenever you are in transit or when you are painting. That means NOT LEAVING YOUR BRUSHES IN YOUR JAR OF TURPS! Other than letting paint dry on your brush, this is the quickest way of ruining your brushes. If you don't have room on your easel for laying down your brushes, then you can lay them on the ground or even stick them handle first in the ground.

Second, if it is sunny outside your paint will dry faster, even on your brushes. If you have a brush with paint on it and have decided to use a different brush for awhile, rinse the paint-filled brush in your turps before you set it aside. Paint can get a quick "skin" on it in the sun. This can cause problems when you go to use it again.

Thirdly, I never fully clean my brushes while in the field. There is enough to carry to worry about bringing enough turps and other items to clean in the field. When I am done painting, I will make sure I have rinsed my brushes as best I can with the turps I have on hand. I will wipe them with a rag. If I am just a short way from home (a half-hour or so), I will put the rinsed and wiped brushes in my paint box and take them home to clean them.

If it will take longer to get home, I will clean and rinse like above and then dip the brushes one more time in the turps so they are fully wet. I will then stick them in a plastic baggie with a zip top. I will close the zip top and try to get as much air as possible out of the baggie. If my brushes are wet with turps and there is no air, any paint on them can't dry out.

Video: Painting a Chicken

First - boil two quarts of water...
Here is a video of me painting a chicken. This video is too fast to notice, but as I was putting the final touch on the beak, a drop of turps ran down off the collar of the brush onto the canvas and I had to spend another fifteen minutes fixing it. Enjoy!

Art Lesson: Creating a Sense of Space

This is Flood Plain, a painting I am working on. This is an oil painting of the flood plain of the Mississippi River located in the St. Anthony Falls gorge which stretches from downtown Saint Paul to downtown Minneapolis. This specific area is on the eastern bank, just inside the Minneapolis border.

As mentioned in the last entry, I am trying to combine two techniques for painting. One technique is linear in nature and the other is more traditional in its approach to color and the representation of space. I need to beef up the more realistically painted tree (I will call him Oliver) in order to balance with the strong contrast of the drawn trees.

In the image above, I have put Oliver in place, but have not gotten into details just yet. I feel at this point that Oliver needs more contrast in order for him to stick out and have a sense of realistic space. Contrast is the key to realistic space. I have decided to paint the background darker in order to have Oliver's light-catching leaves stand out more.












In this second image you can see the trees across the river have been darkened and some details have been added to them. Their forms break down into large billowy shapes of very grey-blue green. I have also lightened the water considerably in order to make even more contrast and a sense of space behind Oliver.

I will now let this backdrop dry before I tackle painting Oliver again.

Art Question: Dealing with Transitions

This is a painting I am in the midst of discovering. As I transition into a new technique with my work, once in awhile, I come to a crossroads where I am not sure what is next.

I originally painted this entire canvas with the appropriate background colors for the different elements; grey-blue-green trees on the other side of the river, blue sky, blue water with some shadowy areas, green grass and purpley and pink sand areas. But, in keeping with my new direction, I wanted the trees to be lines drawn on the canvas. Once they were in, this seemed a bit boring and ineffective. I decided to have one tree painted realistically for contrast. This also seems to symbolize my own transition away from my formal painting background to a more symbolic and abstract technique.

I began to fill in the background with a solid color so the trees will feel more like a drawing. In the process, I changed a few things that bothered me: the base of the clump of trees, edges and the handling of bark. Now this is starting to feel better. The added simplification of the drawn tree area adds more pressure to convincingly portray the realistic tree. The contrast in painting styles means both styles will have to be strong enough to create a balance. I have a fear the realistic tree could look too painterly or too weak in terms of contrast.

I will deal with the realistic tree this weekend. In the meantime, I am not happy with the color of the background I painted today. It needs to be cooler and slightly darker. I was painting into yellow paint that was still a bit wet - this added warmth to the background color in some areas. Oh well, I will repaint it again later, but at least I know what I want now. As it is with any crossroad: make an educated guess, walk down that road and be ready to adjust.

Self-Transendance and Beauty, Part 2

Having been feeling a bit un-unified in all of my many activities lately, I have been looking for something to help move me forward, to help me find more meaning in what I am doing. Finding meaning in my activities has been helped tremendously by a concept of Victor Frankl's, as presented in his book Will to Meaning, published 1969. The concept is called dimensional ontology. Ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

Having read Frankl's definition, I realized that all of my activities make sense to me, as individual activities, but as a whole they are not ordered or grouped in a way that makes any sense to me. But then he had the following diagram in his book on page 23.

Basically, Frankl talks about how an object in a higher dimension can look contradictory in a lower dimension. For example, a cylinder, if viewed in two dimensions from a side view-point, will look like a rectangle. But if it is viewed in two dimensions from the bottom, it will look like a circle. A rectangle and a circle are contradictory, but they both describe a cylinder.

Perhaps my activities are like dimensional ontology. Perhaps what looks like several different activities actually reflect one activity or concept in a higher dimension? If I were to add up all of my activities; painting, writing, Art Dandi, coordinating gardens, coordinating public art maintenance, starting an education department, seeking local food access for the city I live in, fixing up my house, fathering, friendships and family, what do they all reflect in a higher dimension, from a broader perspective? An unruly mess. :P But as I look more closely I start seeing a larger concept of creating environments where transformation can happen. I am not focused on what elements create transformation, i.e. knowledge, time, physical growth, communal growth, etc. But I am very concerned about transformations happening. One form of transformation is self-transcendance. Another larger concept I see is the creation of beauty and beautiful things. Beauty creates transformation within an individual or group of a kinder, more compassionate way. Even a way of transcendance. So, I am beginning to understand the broader themes I find in my life. Like a child flexing its muscles until it can control what it is doing, I am building upon my life experiences to create environments for transformation, environments for self-transcendance.

These ideas have helped me to organize my life in my head, now I'll see if these concepts hold up when I apply my hands to them.

What's beautiful in your life?
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Video: Painting a Kalanchoe

What's beautiful in your life? http://www.markgranlund.com/